One of the key modern
artists, the influential Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico co-founded
the school of Metaphysical
Painting ("la scuola metafisica") along with Carlo
Carra, just after the First World War, and his haunting paintings
of deserted Italianate squares had a huge impact on modern
art in the 1920s, notably Surrealism
- whose leading theorist Andre Breton acknowledged
De Chirico's position as the movement's essential pioneer - as well as
Magic Realism. Although his later works failed to recapture the unsettling
originality of his early paintings, De Chirico's reputation as an important
influence on Surrealist
artists, as well as on modern art
of the 20th-century remains undeniable. Famous paintings by De Chirico
include: The
Uncertainty of the Poet (1913, Tate Collection, London), The
Red Tower (1913, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice), The
Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914, Private Collection),
Song of Love
(1914, MOMA, New York), Metaphysical Interior with Large Factory
(1916, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and The Disquieting Muses (1917,
Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan).

Early Life

Born in Vola, Greece, to a Sicilian father
and Genovese mother, he began studying art in Athens in 1900. In 1906
his parents moved to Munich, where de Chirico enrolled in the Academy
of Fine Arts and came under the influence of 19th-century German philosophers,
such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, as well as works of 19th
century German art by the symbolist painter Arnold
Bocklin (1827-1901) and nightmarish etchings by Max
Klinger (1857-1920). This encouraged him to reject naturalism and
to concentrate instead on poetic, imaginary, and visionary subjects. In
1909, the family moved to Milan where de Chirico produced several examples
of mythological painting
closely based on work by Bocklin.

Early Paintings

De Chirico's first characteristic works date from 1910-11. Subject to
illness and depression, haunted by the writings of Nietzsche and by nostalgic
recollections of Greece and Italy, and a prey to hallucinatory revelations,
de Chirico began portraying a mysterious and troubling world which was
for him as real as the banal world of everyday life. Leaving Milan in
early 1910, he moved to Florence where he completed the first of his "Metaphysical
Town Square" series, The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, following
a revelation he experienced in Piazza Santa Croce. Another Florentine
work was The Enigma of the Oracle. Leaving Florence in the summer
of 1911, he travelled to Paris, spending a few days in Turin, the city
of Nietzsche, whose arcaded buildings, statues, and desolate squares affected
him deeply.

Paris

Arriving in the French capital in July
1911, he joined his brother Andrea De Chirico who introduced him to Pierre
Laprade, a member of the selection-jury at the Salon
d'Automne, where he showed his paintings - Enigma of an Autumn
Afternoon (1910), Enigma of the Oracle (1910), and also Self-Portrait
(1911). In 1913 he exhibited works at both the Salon d'Automne
and the Salon
des Independants which were noticed by Pablo
Picasso as well as the influential art critic Guillaume
Apollinaire (1880-1918).

All this led to his first sale - that of
his painting The Red Tower (1913; Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, Venice). In this (and other) work, De Chirico
created an unsettling sense of enigma in images of trance-like stillness
and silence. The period of time is ambiguous, the space impossibly deep,
and the linear perspective
inconsistent; and objects are irrationally juxtaposed, The strangeness
is heightened by the almost naive lucidity of his style. Sometimes spatially
agoraphobic, sometimes claustrophobic, these paintings, with their looming
statues and shadows, are full of tension and menace. They suggest, through
an apparently unconscious symbolism
of towers, arcades, and trains, feelings of panic and frustration. The
following year, in 1914, thanks to Guillaume Apollinaire, he agreed a
contract with the art dealer Paul
Guillaume.

Metaphysical
School of Painting (La Scuola Metafisica)

On the outbreak of World War I, De Chirico
returned to Italy and was drafted into the army. Due to his poor physical
condition he was assigned to the miliary hospital at Ferrara, where he
continued his painting. His work
by now showed a debt to Cubism
in the shallowness of the pictorial space, the use of collage,
and its imagery of abstracted mathematical instruments.

In January 1917, following a nervous breakdown,
he met the Italian painter Carlo Carra (1881-1966) and together they founded
the Metaphysical School of Painting (La Scuola Metafisica), whose
principles (outlined in Carra's book Pittura Metafisica, 1919)
consisted of a rationalization of the artistic aims De Chirico had held
since 1910-11. Although short-lived - the pair quarrelled and separated
in 1919 - the movement helped to draw attention to De Chirico's concept
of poetic painting, which was to have a profound effect on such Surrealist
artists as Salvador Dali (1904-89), Max
Ernst (1891-1976), Rene Magritte (1898-1967),
Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) and Yves Tanguy
(1900-55). Indeed, it was during the late 1920s, when Surrealism began
to dominate the art world of the inter-war years, that De Chirico's international
reputation was established, although chiefly for his pre-1920 output.

Returns
to Renaissance Craftsmanship

After 1917, when he painted masterpieces
like The Disquieting Muses, (Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan),
de Chirico's work declined, although he created a body of remarkable still
life painting and portrait-art
in 1919, and his work began to be exhibited extensively in Europe. In
1919, he moved to Rome, turned his back on Metaphysical imagery, and became
increasingly concerned with questions of pictorial technique. That autumn
he wrote an article in Valori Plastici entitled "The Return
of Craftsmanship", which proposed a return to traditional methods
and iconography in the style of Old Masters
like Raphael and Signorelli,
and became a vociferous opponent of modern art. From this time onwards,
whenever he did return to his early manner, it was to make copies or pastiches.

Carlo Carra, De Chirico's Italian colleague
in the Scuola Metfisica also returned to Renaissance-based painting.
See, for instance, his still life The
Drunken Gentleman (1916, Private Collection).

In 1924, De Chirico married his first wife,
the Russian ballerina Raissa Gurievich, and relocated to Paris. In 1928,
his reputation buoyed by plaudits from the Surrealists, he had his first
solo exhibition in New York and shortly afterwards, London. He wrote essays
on art and other subjects, and in 1929 briefly recaptured the visionary
intensity of his early metaphysical work in his extraordinary novel Hebdomeros.
The following year he got together with Isabella Pakszwer Far, his second
wife, with whom he returned to Italy where they remained together for
the rest of his long life.

Later Paintings

De Chirico continued painting in a range
of differing classical styles (including a type of Neo-Baroque) for nearly
five decades, until his death in Rome at the age of 89, but these works
never received the same acclaim as those from his pre-1920 metaphysical
period: a situation he deeply resented, as he judged his later work to
be far superior. In 1974, four years before he died, he was elected a
member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.

Reputation and
Legacy

De Chirico's metaphysical art had a major
impact on contemporary and later painters, notably the French-born artist
Yves Tanguy (1900-55), who claimed to have
started painting in 1923 after seeing a De Chirico painting in a gallery
window, despite never having held a brush. Other painters who acknowledged
a debt to De Chirico include the Italians Carlo Carra, and Giorgio
Morandi, the abstract expressionist Philip
Guston and the surrealist artists, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Rene
Magritte.

Collections

Now see as one of the great 20th
century painters, Giorgio De Chirico's works hang in several of the
world's best art museums, notably the
Tate Collection London, the Museum of Modern art New York, and the Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, Venice. His pictures are also represented in a
number of prestigious private collections.

 For biographies of modern Italian
artists, see: Famous painters.
 For more information about modern art in Italy, see: Homepage.